CAIRO: The state of freedom overall in the Middle East declined in 2006 from the previous year, according to the findings of "Freedom in the World, the long-running annual survey released recently by Freedom House The decline is significant in part because the previous year had shown progress in a number of key Arab nations, including Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon - leading to cautious optimism that fundamental change was afoot. However, each of these countries saw political space close during the past year, due to government repression or domestic or armed conflict. This raises the "degree of difficulty for advocates of democracy across the region, at the very moment when the United States appears to be turning its high-level attention back to more traditional concerns in its dealings with the region. This reality was exemplified by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent visit to Cairo, when concerns about the decline of democratic freedom in the largest and most important Arab country were not aired, at least in public. Yet, the fact is that there was good reason to bring up the issue of freedom. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's government retreated in 2006 from the limited steps toward tolerance of political competition taken in the previous year in response to pressure from the Bush administration. Municipal elections have now been postponed, and the 25-year-old state of emergency suspending the Constitution has been extended. Egyptian security forces continued to harass journalists and other critics. Iraq's scores had improved in 2005, when Iraqis chose their government leaders through elections, for the first time in decades. Participation was substantial--despite death threats against voters. In 2006, however, the impunity with which insurgents, sectarian militias, and the government's own security forces committed mayhem against Iraqis diminished civil liberties, as did mistreatment and torture of detainees in the custody of the international military coalition. In Lebanon, the promising achievements of the "Cedar Revolution were jeopardized by the conflict with Israel prompted by Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli servicemen, its later efforts to bring down the elected government of Prime Minister Fouad Seniora, and by Syria and Iran's ongoing campaigns to destroy the country's democracy. In Bahrain and Iran, curbs on freedom of association increased. In both cases, a conspicuous aspect of this constraint was efforts by both governments to thwart their citizens' interaction with foreigners. In Bahrain, this was done by imposing constraints on international civic groups' ability to interact with local organizations. In Iran, the drumbeat of anti-Western rhetoric by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad heightened Iranians' fears of reprisals for associating with counterparts abroad. On the positive side of the ledger, countries as disparate as Syria and Kuwait showed gains for freedom during the year. In Syria, a place where dissidents continued to be arrested for speaking their minds, civil liberties improved slightly due to greater guarantees for property rights in the commercial sphere and modest gains in the ability of citizens to enjoy some personal autonomy. Kuwait had made a large stride forward in political rights in 2005, when some women secured the right to vote and to stand for parliamentary elections. Kuwaitis saw further improvement last June when women participated in national elections. The Al-Sabah family managed a transition to a new monarch and retained overall control of the system, yet the legislature continued to exercise oversight of the executive and air diverse views. In other monarchies, such as Morocco and Jordan, the battle against terrorism and other anxieties have led political reform efforts to stall. Even though both countries have parliaments that often matter, as well as wide-ranging freedoms in some areas, these remain monarchies, limiting the scope of what can be done. Israel remains the lone democracy in the region, though there are persistent concerns about treatment of its Arab minority, the outsized influence on the polity of tiny religious parties, persistent corruption in government, and the potential negative impact on freedoms because of the continuing threat from hostile neighbors. Lively criticism of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's handling of the war in Lebanon underscored the high degree of freedom in Israel. Despite an upgrade in the political rights score for the Palestinian Authority, thanks to the January 2006 cleanly-run legislative elections, the subsequent fighting between gunmen loyal to the two major Palestinian factions, and harassment of the press by both sides, led to a decline in the civil liberties score. Israeli military intervention in parts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank led to an even lower score for those areas controlled by Israel. Overall, freedom slid slowly backward across much of the Middle East last year, as governments apparently came to believe the United States would not press as hard for reform, and democratic activists became more hesitant about being identified with the signature issue of the American president. Challenges to consolidation of political democracy in the region loom as large as ever, and it appears that Arab and Iranian democrats will have to play the leading roles in advancing freedom in their own lands. Thomas O. Melia is deputy executive director of Freedom House. This commentary was written for THE DAILY STAR
